I know not what qualifies me to be your choice of speaker at this maiden event but believe me, I am here with delight because my recollections of, and my interactions with the Body of Benchers fill me with nostalgia.
As a young law graduate applying to the Nigerian Law School, the fear of the Body of Benchers, was the beginning of wisdom, back in the 1980s, when I had cause to interact with the body.
It was not “fear” represented by “dread”. On the contrary, it was “awe inspiring fear” of the achievements of the members in and out of law practice and their stature as giants of our profession and society; men and women of high repute and integrity.
Indulge me by allowing to recall 3 (three) of them and thus, set the stage for the focus of my intervention today.
THE PAST
The first is the late Chief Debo Akande, SAN, who was my late father’s friend, who gladly accepted to have me undertake my compulsory law office chambers attachment in his office at the Western House. Having supervised me for several weeks it was easy to make a personal reference and recommendation about my suitability for the Call to Bar.
And the fundamental question is this: How many benchers today have had the personal experience and observation of the persons they sponsor for Call to the Bar?
And this takes me to my second Bencher, T.A.B OKI, SAN also of blessed memory. He was my second sponsor. He did not know me, but had known my father and grandparents for many years. He was a very reluctant sponsor and made me know it.
He refused to sign my form when my father presented it to him. He insisted I must come to his office on Kofo Abayomi in Victoria Island which I did. At his office, he interviewed me as if I was seeking employment with him.
He made it very clear that he was gambling on me only because he knew my father very well and extracted an undertaking from me to always try to be of good behaviour, according to him, “like my father.” I readily gave the undertaking in writing and the experience has never left me.
How many Benchers today sponsor candidates for Call to the Bar that they have never interacted with?
The third Bencher on focus is Mr. Webber George Egbe, QC, SAN, also now of blessed memory. He was the chairman of the Body for 1988 – 1989. He presided at my Call to Bar on the 2nd of November 1988.
In the speech he delivered, he said many things that I do not now remember. But he said one thing which I have never forgotten and it has remained with me as a useful tool of life.
He spoke about the power of self-discipline. The core of the message was that from primary school through to that night of our call to bar, we had been under some form of imposed discipline by parents, guardians, teachers, lecturers and persons who stood in loco parentis.
On that night of our call to bar, he said the “yoke” of imposed discipline had been lifted but that we needed to remain disciplined to progress in life and that the hardest discipline was self-imposed discipline, which each of us must now find.
I have chosen to start my intervention today by these stories in an effort to graphically illustrate the profundity and importance of one of the statutory functions of the Body of Benchers, which is to regulate the admission of persons into the legal profession and to exercise disciplinary jurisdiction over legal practitioners as prescribed in the Legal Practitioners Act (LPA), Cap L11, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004.
It is a big responsibility of Human Capital Development and nation-building that is not to be undertaken lightly or with levity. If anyone of unsuitable quality, character, integrity, or competence slips through the cracks, a poor-quality lawyer has been made, a potentially poor-quality Law Teacher, Prosecutor, Judge, Legal adviser or Law Officer.
A grave danger would have been created for the system of Administration of Justice where the stakes are very high in terms of Lives and Livelihoods.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the events I have recalled about the three gentlemen about whom I have spoken relate to an era around 1988 (37 years ago) a whole generation. At the time when I enrolled at the Supreme Court which was then in Lagos on the 3rd of November 1988, I was No. 10,550 on the roll of the Supreme Court.
From my enquiry, the Nominal Roll of the Supreme Court now has 146,255 lawyers.
The theme of this lecture is: “Half A Century of The Body of Benchers, The Past, The Present, And The Future of Maintaining The Ethics of The Legal Profession in Nigeria.”
Permit me, therefore, to adopt my short stories as representative of the past in the discussion of the past, present and future of the Body of Benchers.
Inherent in those 3 (three) stories are practical illustrations of the work of the Body of Benchers through its members, manifestly concerned about issues of integrity and character of persons, who pass through them to be admitted to the Nigerian Bar and unleashed unto the larger society.
But the pertinent question to ask the layman is who are these people who call themselves the Body of Benchers and what do they do? These are questions the Body must consciously attempt to answer by engaging in what I call Street Level conversation.
Given the quality of the audience here today it will serve no useful purpose for me to attempt that answer in any detail in view of the constraints of my time.
For the Layman, who uses a search engine to look for the Body of Benchers, one would come across a site named bob.goo.ng. That site relates the history of the Body to the work of the Unsworth Commission constituted by Prime Minister Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa.
This would give the impression that the Body came into being in the 1960s and should be commemorating its sixth decade of existence. This is in stark contrast to the notice of the body at this event to review its past, present and future in Half a century.
It suffices to say, as a reminder to all who are present that this body is the Regulator and quality controller of the legal profession. If quality control fails the society is in trouble.
I believe it was in the popular case of LPC v. Abuah, which we are all familiar with that the pioneer Chairman of the Body of Benchers, Sir Adetokunbo Ademola, restated the onerous responsibility of those charged with admission of new lawyers when His Lordship said: “By enrolling them, we present them to the public as men the public can, with confidence, employ to carry out the duties and responsibilities appertaining to their all-important office. We, therefore, owe it to the public to see that members of the public are not exposed to risks in their dealings with these men.”
It is of course important to mention that the body did not always exist. Prior to its establishment, applicants who had qualified and had been called to the Bar in other jurisdictions were enrolled in the Supreme Court.
This is the reason our first-generation lawyers had two dates: the date of Call to Bar and the date of Enrolment in the Supreme Court. It was in the late 1960s, after the establishment of the Nigerian Law School, that the idea was conceived to establish a body to be responsible for admission of applicants to the Bar in Nigeria before their enrolment by the Supreme Court.
This led to the promulgation of the Legal Practitioners (Amendment) Decree No. 45 of 1971, which formally established the Body of Benchers fifty-four years ago under the leadership of the then Chief Justice of Nigeria, Hon. Justice Adetokunbo Ademola.
But many things have changed.
THE PRESENT
As we move from the past to the present, we must acknowledge that the Supreme Court in which I registered in Lagos, is now in Abuja, the Nigerian Law School which was only in Lagos now has schools in Abuja, Bayelsa, Kano, Enugu, Yola, and Port Harcourt in addition to the Lagos School.
The world itself has changed and a survey will reveal to us that our Law School is now graduating about 5,000 students averagely per annum. This is now about half of the 10,550 lawyers, who registered in Nigeria when I enrolled in 1988.
There are now 146,255 lawyers on the nominal roll. There is also good reason for us to be concerned about public perception of our administration of justice system in which lawyers produced from the Law School and admitted to the Bar by the Body of Benchers play a prominent role.
If this is a fair picture of the present, what should we do about the future? From where will reformists like those who spearheaded the Birth of the Council of Legal Education, The Nigerian Law School and the Body of Benchers come; one might ask?
THE FUTURE
My answer is that many more of them are in this audience and so this lecture provides a unique opportunity to start the conversation. Therefore, within the framework of the theme past, present and future selected for this conversation, I wish to ask the reform minded persons in our midst whether the time has not come to re-think and re-make how we train lawyers in Nigeria?
Given the public concerns about the administration of justice, has the time not come upon us to separate and specialise the training of solicitors from Barristers or advocates. The focus on Benchers/Advocates is particularly important because it is the output of their work in the courtrooms that the public is overtly concerned about.
Is this not the time to also look in the mirror and at the current Law School curriculum and ask ourselves what kind of advocate we can train in 1(one) year with a theoretical outlook and insufficient time or infrastructure for Court Room practice and exposure.
Put differently, can the current theoretical exposure and limited court and chambers attachment deliver the “…intangible attitudes of a Lawyer…” that Justice Orojo spoke about as the reason for the establishment of the Body of Benchers.
Permit me to tell you yet another story.
It is a story that hugs the controversy of whether law practice is a trade or a profession. That debate has been had by many intellectuals, and the “profession” appears to have overcome “trade.”
What is undeniable is that the law profession, especially the Barrister’s work, is rooted in norms, usages, traditions, and culture, all of which are best learned in practice rather than in a classroom.
The story of Owoblow is empirical proof of the point. It is the story of a graduate not of law who, for lack of employment, took up the job of a law clerk back in the 1990s. His job was to file and serve court processes. He was trained to draft affidavits of service and to depose to them and get court processes into file.
From time to time, he accompanied lawyers to court. In no time, he knew the names, citations and locations in the office library of all the major cases on injunctions, stay of Execution, summary judgment and the major legal issues that dominated headlines in the 1990s.
On one occasion as senior associate, when l reviewed the work done by law students on chamber attachment and asked why he had drafted a document in a particular way, the response I got was that it was Owoblow that taught him to draft it that way.
I was outraged that a law graduate under training in the Nigerian Law School was taking instructions from a non-law graduate, who had not been to law school. But the reality was that Owoblow was training by daily practice. He knew the Bailiffs Section, Probate Section, and had become comfortable with completing the forms for Lawyers in chambers to sign.
In the event, the chamber advised Owoblow to return to university, where he got a law degree and from there to law school. I can say that he is now one of us, and was very well trained.
Given this story, the question to ask is how many of the over 5,000 lawyers were ready for courtroom work the following day. Some of the best lawyers and Judges of repute produced in this country walked paths similar to that of Owoblow, by serving as court clerks or Registrars, before embarking on formal training as lawyers.
Clearly, there is a lot to learn from this about the gaps in our training of lawyers. What we seemed to have focused on is the academic part. The Bar Standards Board which regulates the profession in England and Wales, moves beyond this by stipulating vocational training and pupillage (after the academic training) before a barrister can appear in court.
We must ask ourselves whether those who just want a law degree to proceed to other occupations should bother to go to the law school. We must also question the continued relevance of the law school as a training institution and its efficacy to train over 5,000 students into proficient advocates.
I would recommend that post-university training of solicitors and advocates be left now and in the future to law firms to be accredited nationwide for that purpose, while the Law School under the aegis of the Council of Legal Education remains an examining and certification body, separating Solicitors examinations from that of Barristers.
In the latter case that is where the scrutiny of the Body of Benchers should be focused – those Barristers to be admitted to the Bar. My suggestions are not perfect, but I believe that the time for change and reform was yesterday. If we are to remake the system of administration of justice, we must start with the people who get to operate the system.
Competence is key and it is from competence that we can set standards. When we set standards, non-compliance is easily detectable and sanctionable. I regret to say that today one is hard put to see the “wood from the trees” in the difference between incompetence and misconduct in some judicial outcomes.
The skill of Barristers and those of them who become Judges and their level of competence must account in part for why cases based largely on documents still take several years to try and decide in spite of many fast-track efforts.
Before I conclude, I must be on record to state for those who do not know that in addition to its recommendation of persons to be called to the bar, the Body of Benchers also has responsibility for discipline of legal practitioners who are not judges.
This is a very important responsibility and the future of the profession and by extension the Body of Benchers depends on how this responsibility is discharged.
Put differently, when quality control fails and a bad product enters society, what is the power of recall or remediation that the Body of Benchers exercises to remedy the situation? I am aware that the Committee that discharges this responsibility on behalf of the Body – the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee – has tried and dispensed with some high-profile cases.
I am glad to learn from the Chairman of the Body of Benchers, Asiwaju Adegboyega Awomolo, SAN that there is going to be a public presentation of the Reports of the Directions of the LPDC today immediately after this lecture. This is commendable.
But the question to ask is whether the average Nigerian thinks that the Committee has done enough. The public space is full of reports of multiplicity of suits and suggestions of forum/fora shopping aided by legal practitioners in manifest abuse of the judicial process.
What does it take to bring these lawyers to book and what kind of consequences are they subject to? To the extent that public confidence is critical to the reputation of the system of administration of justice, l think these are matters that require serious consideration.
Our judicial system which is one of the most revered judicial systems in the commonwealth, is facing scrutiny under a large microscope. The reasons for scrutiny are not far-fetched. Some of the outcomes from the legal system raise more than an eyebrow.
If the outcomes raise concern, certainly we must interrogate the input, which is the quality of persons admitted to the Bar by the Body of Benchers.
This meeting is our golden moment to start a new journey for the Nigerian Legal system by demonstrating that there are internal self-correcting mechanisms that ensure that the dispensation of justice is speedy, credible and reliable.
By reforming the training process of persons called to the Bar (as distinct from Solicitors whose work is not so much public facing) we can secure a prosperous future for the legal profession that is anchored on sound ethical foundations of competence, character and integrity.
This is the hard but necessary road of the journey to restoring public confidence in the Nigerian legal system and profession.
*Above is an abridged version of a keynote speech by a former Minister of Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, on the theme: ‘Half-a-century of the body of benchers: the past, the present, and the future of maintaining the ethics of the legal profession in Nigeria’ delivered on Wednesday, March 26th, 2025, at the main auditorium, Body of Benchers Complex, Abuja.
